


Til the End of Time

by recoveringrabbit



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Epistolary, F/M, Mutual Pining, World War II, mutual yearning, these two are not v subtle and yet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2020-01-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:46:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22024306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/recoveringrabbit/pseuds/recoveringrabbit
Summary: Til the End of Time: The Selected Correspondence of Sergeant Jemima Simmons (122nd London Motor Transport Division) and Corporal L.J. Fitz (275th Royal Engineers), July 1944-June 1945.As part of her duties, Sergeant Simmons takes it upon herself to write a condolence letter to Corporal Fitz. Corporal Fitz responds. Sergeant Simmons writes back again. And again, and again, and again.
Relationships: Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons
Comments: 134
Kudos: 150





	1. "How Do We Begin?" - July & August 1944

**Author's Note:**

  * For [whatlighttasteslike (waitingforeleven)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/waitingforeleven/gifts).



> Happy Secret Santa, Melissa! I was so happy to write this for you and can only apologise that (as is usual for me) it got away from me, rather. Rest assured that your squeal-worthy prompt will be properly addressed in the next bit.
> 
> A note: though there is nothing graphic in this fic, Jemma and Fitz are in the middle of a war and reference unpleasant things that rise from that situation, both physical and mental. It is not a 100% fluff fic.

Jemma threw her uniform hat on the wooden desk and dropped into her chair with a heavy sigh, pressing the heels of her hands against her eyebrows to relieve the pressure that had been building there since the sirens went off two hours ago. Four bomb sites in as many days had a way of testing one’s nerves, even without the near-constant wail of the air-raid warnings as the V-1 rockets cleaved their aimless courses over London; that this one had been nearly a whole row of terraced houses full of mums at home with young children only exacerbated her bone-deep weariness. Between the noise and the feel of grit between her teeth and the smell of blood that clung to her clothes, she wanted nothing more than a bath and bed, where she could sink into the quiet of a sweet-smelling cave of blankets and finally rest. But no one, she thought drearily, had enjoyed the luxury of a full-night’s rest since 1941, and she had used up her month’s soap coupons already.

“Sergeant Simmons?”

Snatching up her hat to jam it back over her curls, she fought to keep her expression benign. But could she not have even this measure of peace? “Come in.”

Private Davies entered and saluted sharply, though her face held more pity than deference. Jemma let it pass.

“At ease. Dispatches?”

“Just the post, ma’am,” said Davies, bringing it out from behind her back and passing it across the desk, “but ma’am, I’m afraid there’s another letter—”

But the letter made itself known before Davies could finish the warning, and Jemma had to bite back a sharp word when she read the address. “ _Another_ for Macallister? How had she time to do her job when she had clearly taken it on herself to correspond with every member of the Territorial Army?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Davies’ lips tightened, clearly holding back something everyone would rather she didn’t say. “We did think we had got to everyone she wrote to, but this one seems not to have been a regular. Unless our letters crossed over the Channel somehow. Do you want me to take it back, ma’am, and have one of the other girls—”

“No, I’ll do it. It’s my responsibility.”

Jemma set the rest of the post down and held Macallister’s letter in both hands, one thumb tracing the address: _Private Mary Macallister, 122 nd London M.T. Company, A.T.S_. She had seen it just this way on a score of envelopes since the girl’s death, mute reminders that the dead leave ripples behind them; whether Macallister had been the most outrageous flirt or merely a soft touch for lonely soldiers, she had meant something to the men whose letters kept winging to her. Flipping the envelope over, she found the sender’s name and, with it, confirmation. This was a new one. Some soldier—perhaps in North Africa, likely in France—living through what could only be rightly termed as hell, writing to a girl without knowing that he would never hear from her again. Perhaps he had really liked her. Perhaps this news, which Jemma now felt as a niggling splinter, would deal him a serious blow. Stricken with a sudden sympathy, she set the letter down gently and glanced up at Davies. “That will be all, Davies, sorry. Unless there’s something else?”

“No, ma’am.”

The girl—girl, as though she and Jemma weren’t exactly the same age—shifted from foot to foot.

“Yes?” said Jemma.

“Nothing, ma’am, only I thought perhaps you might want a cuppa, before you have to go out again.”

Jemma looked where the window would be, were it not boarded up after the glass blew out in a raid last month, and put one hand over the letter. “Yes, I would rather. Thank you, Davies.”

The cup, when it came, was piping hot and clearly made with fresh leaves. A cup of kindness. Though only the plane spotters knew how long she would have to enjoy it, Jemma took no more than a long, bracing sniff before uncapping her pen and setting ink to paper.

* * *

11 July 1944

Dear Corporal Fitz,

I am very sorry to have to tell you that Private Macallister was killed in the line of duty earlier this month. She had gone out with her ambulance to a bomb site and got caught in another raid on the way back from hospital. It was terribly bad luck, but she was a brave girl and would not, I think, have wanted it another way, especially as the parties she took to hospital all survived.

As you can see, I am returning your letter without opening it. I hope its reappearance does not cause you too much pain. Private Macallister was a credit to the company and well-liked by her peers; you have my deepest sympathy for your loss.

Respectfully,

Sergeant Jemima A. Simmons

122nd London Motor Transport

* * *

15 July 1944

Dear Sergeant Simmons,

Thank you for letting me know about Mary. I might have found out in time another way, but it doesn’t seem very likely. The only person who could tell me would be my mother. She tries to avoid sending news like that. Don’t know why; hearing about people dying doesn’t make me more likely to die myself. If it did have some sort of relationship I would be out of luck here, anyway.

I don’t know how well you knew Mary. I didn’t know her very well—her grandparents lived on the same street as my mother and I, but she only came to visit a few times. I remember her being particularly interested in engines and once helping to fix a wireless I found in a bin. It makes sense that she would end up doing something with cars. I’m also confident that you are right and she would be glad to know she saved those people. She had a knack for being kind just as much as mechanics.

Perhaps you won’t be allowed to tell me, but did she die in a V-1 attack? We’ve been reading about them in the papers but, as you probably know, the papers aren’t full of details about how they work. I expect you have first-hand knowledge yourself. If it isn’t too much trouble, could you explain exactly what one experiences when a V-1 detonates? My engineer mates and I have a little wager going. (I know that sounds dreadful. But you must have something to keep you distracted, and if I’m right about how they operate I’m going to get Lance-Corporal **{BLACKED OUT}** sweet ration for two weeks, assuming we both **{BLACKED OUT** **}**.) I’m sorry to ask—you must also be very busy—but with Mary gone there isn’t anyone else.

Respectfully,

Corporal L. Fitz

275th Royal Engineers

* * *

20 July 1944

Dear Corporal Fitz,

I _am_ very busy, but no more so than you, I imagine. Perhaps less so; not being on the front lines, we have times during which we are not required to be on duty. Having one of these times presently at my disposal I will attempt to help you win your Lance-Corporal’s sweet ration. 

She did die of a doodlebug—that’s what we’ve taken to calling them, as though having a silly name could make it any less terrible. I’m afraid I’d better not mention where; though the Germans can hardly helping knowing their bombs _are_ hitting it seems unlikely they know exactly _where_.

What happens is this: the air-raid sirens go, as they often do, and ordinary people run for the shelters and we of the ATS run to our ambulances. Perhaps you know that the ordinary bombs from early in the war were deafening when they hit, but a doodlebug is loud the whole time; as it flies through the air it makes the most ghastly shriek, and also sounds rather like a car rattling down a rutted lane held together by luggage straps. The sound could drive a person mad except that when it ends the buzz bomb will hit somewhere within ten seconds, so when the sound cuts out one throws oneself to the ground and counts until one hears the explosion—or one doesn’t hear the explosion, and is killed. At least, I expect one wouldn’t hear the explosion.

The whole time the doodlebug is making noise it has flames shooting out of its tail; it looks rather like a rocket in an illustration from an H.G. Wells novel. Perhaps it is. I believe, from my experience in the aftermath, that they either obliterate their pilots or they haven’t got them. I certainly haven’t seen any Germans coming out of the wreckage. I could describe in detail what the sites look like after a doodlebug has arrived, but it would likely be censored and so I will save my hand and my ink. Suffice to say that today I took a boy of about twelve to hospital with his four-year-old sister; they had been sent down the street after the meat ration and their house, and their mother, had disappeared by the time they retrieved it. The girl hasn’t a scratch on her; her brother shoved her behind a wall and covered her with his own body. I suppose the WVS will take them up now, try to find any relatives or place them elsewhere if there are none to be found.

Looking back over that paragraph I realise it’s pretty dismal, and yet all I meant was to answer your question. Perhaps that’s why your mother doesn’t even attempt to tell you bad news. We’re forever being reminded that letters to the front are meant to boost morale, and it’s difficult to imagine anything in this letter doing so.

From how quickly your response arrived I imagine you are somewhere with the Allied forces in France. I do hope you win that ration. From what we can gather from our papers you men have been and still are in a rather dreadful situation and it would be nice to have something to look forward to. As an engineer I expect you don’t have to be on the front lines, but—regardless, I hope you remain safe.

Respectfully,

Sergeant J. Simmons

P.S. Oh, lord, I’m suddenly terribly aware that we’re not meant to be maundering mournfully to Our Boys, who are dealing with difficulties we can’t begin to imagine. Could you possibly be so kind as to pretend that the dram of gin I threw back because I simply can’t bear to use the tea leaves a fifth time was enough to loosen my metaphorical tongue? I don’t write letters that aren’t informing someone of something terrible very often, you see.

* * *

24 July 1944

Dear Sergeant Simmons,

Thank you very much for your thorough information. Everything you said supported my position and the unbiased jury of my peers awarded me the ration fair and square.

Please don’t think I’m trying to push myself in where I’m not wanted, but your post-script seemed upset and I wanted to tell you I don’t mind, there’s no need to blame it on gin or anything else. I’m not bothered by what you said. That is, I am, because I am very sorry for the boy and his sister, but I’m not going to go into a blue fugue or recklessly throw myself on a grenade because you told me the truth of what’s happening to the folks back home. We all know it must be something of the sort. Some of my mates can pretend their families are eating strawberries (when they’re in season) and frolicking at the seaside—some of them have to or they _will_ throw themselves on a grenade—but that isn’t me and never has been. If anything I’m glad to know. It gives me even more of a desire to press forward and stop this war if we possibly can.

That’s it, then, I’ve said what I meant to. Thank you, again, for letting me know about Mary’s letters stopping and for the information about doodlebugs. I will do my best to remain safe and hope that you will do the same, as much as possible.

With the very best of wishes,

Corporal L. Fitz

* * *

31 July 1944

Dear Corporal Fitz,

Perhaps you’re surprised to receive another letter from me after your last tied such a neat bow on the whole correspondence. My mother would likely tell me I ought to have taken the hint and left it there, but I rather thought there was more than one possible interpretation of some of your sentences and perhaps you wouldn’t mind continuing to receive letters. As you said yourself, one does need a distraction in these trying times. For my part I could also do with a bit of distraction; my days are primarily made up of air raids and paperwork, with very few conversations with anyone that doesn’t refer to me as “ma’am.” I have been a reluctant correspondent since leaving home—not because I don’t care for writing, but because I was afraid that I would be unable to keep the ugliness out of my letters—as you are aware I was. But you said you didn’t mind. If so—that is, if you truly don’t mind if terrible things refuse to stay tidily tucked away—perhaps I might take Macallister’s place? It seems as though you might enjoy having someone else to whom to write.

Or perhaps I’ve completely misinterpreted the situation and you have pen friends from here to the China Sea, in which case you must ignore _me_ pushing in where _I’m_ not wanted and say so. I’ve often thought it terrible that when a soldier asks a girl “may I write to you?” the girl has no choice but to say “yes” and I would despise myself for doing the same. You are under no obligation.

There is no way to end this letter gracefully. I’ll just stick a stamp on it and hope for the best,

Jemma Simmons

* * *

2 August 1944

Dear Sergeant Simmons,

We’re on the move again so I have about twenty seconds to scribble this. Please forgive the penmanship; I haven’t yet managed to train myself out of jumping when bombs go off too near me. What no one seems to consider is that you ladies are also soldiers who should by rights receive post to boost morale and so anytime you ask to be written to, it’s only fair that a man say “yes.” I am also saying yes, but not out of a sense of duty. Selfishly it’s embarrassing to only get letters from your mother. And also, I too hate how girls have to agree to write any boob that asks them, so I think we could be friends.

How do we begin?

Hastily,

L.J. Fitz

* * *

5 August 1944

Dear Corporal Fitz,

I’m not sure how people generally begin this kind of thing. At least, I expect they begin by flirting at a dance, but as we’ve passed over that step and have no hope of remedying our error any time soon, we are forced to make it up as we go, I think. Fortunately I’ve heard enough girls gush about men at dances to grasp the essential points. A straightforward précis seems to be in order.

  1. My name is Jemima Simmons, but I’m called Jemma when not in company.
  2. I am from Sheffield, where my father is a solicitor and my mother kept a very tidy house before the war. Now she heads Collection for her chapter of the WVS.
  3. I am a sergeant in the Auxiliary Territory Service, where I work in a **{BLACKED OUT}** division. We are actually one of the FANY units, so while other units concentrate on chauffeuring officers or running messages, we are dedicated to ambulance services.
  4. I joined the ATS in 1942 after I came down; my degree is in biological sciences so they were not entirely certain what to do with me, but as I could drive a car well they eventually decided I would fit in with the FANYs.
  5. I have been in **{BLACKED OUT}** the majority of the time since then.
  6. Girls coming back from dances always give some sort of besotted description of the new pash. While I have no reason to suppose you would care and it isn’t strictly necessary, in the interests of being thorough: I have brown hair and brown eyes and am not tall.



There. According to Macallister and the rest of the girls in my unit that’s quite enough to be getting on with. Myself I always thought I would prefer rather more information before embarking on a correspondence for any reason other than business, but considering all I know about you is that

  1. You are an engineer;
  2. You like sweets;
  3. You are at the very least a dutiful son; and
  4. You are likely a Scot



perhaps I oughtn’t feel so superior. Then again, those facts seem more essential than one’s military service or eye colour, so I may continue as I am.

I hope your “move” was accomplished with all hoped-for success, and any further re-locations continue as you have begun.

Respectfully,

Jemma Simmons

* * *

9 August 1944

Dear Sergeant Simmons,

Forgive the late response; haven’t had much time to spare between re-locations.

Actually there isn’t much more to know outside of those four things. I joined the Royal Engineers after getting my degree, which was in mechanical engineering, so they knew precisely where to put me. After getting through training I was sent to Italy and stayed there with **{BLACKED OUT}** until we were all called home to train for what ended up being the Continental invasion. Then we came here. Since then we have been making our way slowly through France. That much I think I can say since (like you said in one of your earlier letters) the Germans can’t help knowing _some_ of our boys are here. Where specifically, I don’t know. I was rubbish at geography in school and I never came here on holiday as some of the lads did. All I know is what I can learn by looking around, which is: the French may have capitulated to avoid getting trampled by Hitler and his goons, but if they’ve been treated nicely I can’t imagine what countries that resisted look like now. Of course wherever I go I’m following a bombing campaign and a pretty severe fire-fight at least, but it’s grim. The people watch us as we pass with hollow eyes and resigned faces. Perhaps the men who are first in see something different. By the time we support persons get there, they seem to have realized that one occupying army isn’t much different from the next.

Don’t take that to mean I see no difference between us and the Germans. You hear horror stories and I don’t think all of them are lies. But a horde of German soldiers needed to be fed and bedded and amused is likely not very different from a horde of British or American ones. I seem to have gotten off the point.

To provide you with an equal amount of information, I will add that I have a mother who lives in Glasgow and is an air raid warden, and that I have blue eyes and curly hair and am also not tall. My Christian name I’m going to keep secret. I keep it secret from everyone, if I can help it. It’s old-fashioned and silly and dangerous in this day and age. My second name is after my father James but everyone, in company or not, calls me Fitz.

Did you have a specialty in biological sciences? Only it seems a large field to become an expert in the whole of it.

Respectfully,

Fitz


	2. "I Find My Hand Running Away With My Pen" - September & October 1944

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you read this fic between 29 December and today, this chapter will seem familiar to you—it got so far away from me I had to restructure the darn thing, and this is part of that. Nothing new has been added, it's just to keep it consistent!

1 September 1944

Dear Simmons,

I am writing to you from **{BLACKED OUT}** where the Americans, with help from our boys, managed to push through yesterday. Most of the RCME came up after. We follow behind as a general rule, unless there’s something particular we’re wanted for—shoring up bridges, for example, or setting explosives. There was some of that, I believe, but not a great deal. The Germans aren’t putting up as much of a fight as they were two months ago. I hope that means things will start going more quickly, but it probably only means that they’re drawing back to Germany and we’ll have a devil of a fight when we get there.

The papers will have everything that I could say about the event itself before this letter gets to you, of course. It’s strange, knowing that when you read this not only will you already know all about it, but I’ll likely be even further **{BLACKED OUT}.** When I write my mother she only wants to know if I’m keeping my feet dry. That’s the kind of news that doesn’t change very often. (In case you’re curious, not at all in July when the weather was terrible; more so now.)

The men in the battalion I support are feeling full of pep today. As I’ve been fixing rifles they’ve been talking to me about the town up ahead. Apparently in the early days of the war, before my time, the unit was forced to surrender there and there is a regimental pride of being able to walk the streets again as victors. We’ll just all hope that this is the last reversal.

It doesn’t look as though we will be going to **{BLACKED OUT}** officially. I suppose they’ve got enough men to hold it and the French are meant to have woken up as well, so we wouldn’t be needed. Some of the lads are trying to get leave now while **{BLACKED OUT}**. I could go along if I liked but I don’t. Nothing against the city, but they’ve been in four years of war like everywhere else and I’ve seen enough rubble to last me my whole life. There’s a bit of a joke among engineers—and the Royal Engineers too, I suppose—that all we’re about is blowing things to smithereens, but the longer I’ve been with the army the sadder I think it is. People wouldn’t have gone on holiday to France all these years if it wasn’t a nice place. Now I wonder how long it will take people to want to come here again.

Of course, London is probably the same and I would walk there if given the opportunity, _with_ pack and all, even though as a good Scotsman I hold onto a healthy aloofness about the place. It shouldn’t go giving itself airs, that’s all. Being from the North I expect you understand.

Stay as safe as you can and I will do the same,

Fitz

* * *

12 September 1944

Dear Fitz,

Shall we make a pact? We both have vitally important work that requires our attention and prevents us from answering letters straight away; let’s make one apology now and have it count for all future situations in which it would be required. It does get so tiresome to be constantly explaining oneself even when one knows the other party understands the circs. _I’m sorry I couldn’t respond straightaway—now and forever, Jemma Simmons_.

No, I didn’t always intend to study biology; as a small girl I had a much stronger fascination with the stars and more examples of those of my sex in the field. I didn’t decide for good on biology until I had to have an urgent appendectomy at the age of ten. No one could tell me _why_ this provoking organ had suddenly decided to have a fit, nor could they explain what it did in the normal course of things, and I thought it mad that they would preform operations as a matter of routine when they didn’t understand the item in question at all. That set my future path. Of course we still aren’t any the wiser about the appendix in particular and my own areas of study have nothing to do with it, but very often the beginning of a journey has very little to do with where one ends up. Don’t you think?

My ambulance nearly gave up the ghost yesterday; I had stopped her at a hospital to conserve petrol while the orderlies unloaded my cargo—three elderly sisters keeping house together, all of them with broken bones but nothing life-threatening—and couldn’t make her go when it was time for another run. My mechanics training has helped me often throughout my time in the service, but this particular issue refused to be solved by any of the normal methods. I nearly gave it up as a hopeless case and was just considering asking if I could ring HQ when I remembered your observation that pounding something hard enough will often make it behave. So I retrieved the tire iron and swung at the workings like a star cricketer, which startled her enough that she purred like a cat the next time I turned the key. We made three more runs without another issue. Temporary patch? I suppose you’ll say likely, but needs must, and we haven’t got another ambulance in the whole of the command, I expect.

We’ve been having a spot of bother here, actually. I don’t expect you’ll have heard. It will be amusing, perhaps, to see how much of this paragraph makes it through. After two months of near constant doodlebugs we have grown used to their particular brand of pest, but they appear to have evolved into a much more plaguing creature—like a housefly turning into a horsefly. Several days ago **{A SENTENCE BLACKED OUT}**. The official word at first was a gas leak, **{SEVERAL LINES BLACKED OUT}**. I haven’t yet had to go out to one of these incidents. Though it isn’t very _pukka sahib_ , I confess to you that I dread the day my turn comes. My girls’ faces have been terrible to see. The only silver lining is that one of those runs uses less petrol because we haven’t the need for as many trips to the hospital.

Do you know, I believe I used to be rather a cheerful person? It’s difficult to remain so because so often all one can say is, “well, at least I haven’t been killed,” and so many people _have_ that it seems rather glib. But I suppose life is all we have left.

Stay safe, and I shall do the same,

Simmons

* * *

27 September 1944

Dear Simmons,

Please don’t feel you have to stop yourself from writing about the {scratched out} the gas line incidents on my account. It’s true I don’t like hearing about insides where they don’t belong but we none of us have much say about that in our present lines of work, do we? And I’d rather you say what you need to instead of trying to stuff it down somehow. It _is_ terrible and you don’t have to pretend it isn’t.

I haven’t got much to say to distract today—more slogging through the country, more mending broken military devices. Sounds like we’ll have a bit of a rest coming up, by which I mean we’ll stay in one place and get shot at instead of going other places to shoot at people. I will neither shoot nor be shot at if everything goes as it’s meant to. But what is war except a long series of things not going as they’re meant to. What is war at all, except things not going as they’re meant to.

Still, I’ve been thinking lately about the miracle at Dunkirk. For no reason whatsoever. We’re the same age, so I expect you’ll remember it as well as I do—France fallen, the Germans shoving our boys towards the sea, no one _saying_ anything about what was happening but everyone knowing disaster could fall at any minute. And then...it didn’t. At least, it ended up being rather disastrous for France but not as bad as it could have been for us, and so not as bad as it could have been for all our allies now. And then the Prime Minister’s speech, telling us that though it was a tactical defeat we had managed to come through because hundreds and thousands of people had done all they could to fight back the menace.

And so we still are: I am, and you, and everybody who goes out into horror and does their duty. It made a difference then. We’ll hope it makes a difference now.

Stay as safe as you can,

Fitz

* * *

8 October 1944

Simmons,

One interesting thing about war is that one meets so many different sorts of people. When you grow up in the same street all your life your world is very small. The same people in the same houses with the same conversation and habits and memories, and when one of them dies their son or daughter comes in and its as though nothing changed. I don’t know if that was true of your growing up. But anyway, in war you’re right up against men who have their own conversation and habits and memories that might be miles different from yours. In the past we were in the same areas as Americans—I cannot begin to tell you how foreign _they_ are, they might as well be speaking a different language—and of course we’ve been around the French for a bit now. Then today I met some men from a place so far from Glasgow it felt like the moon. I had better not say where for everyone’s safety (even though you don’t know where I am so no one could know where they are either). We couldn’t speak each other’s language but machines are the same the world over. It was quite a companionable time, fixing **{BLACKED OUT}** and smiling at each other so you knew any annoyed shouts weren’t directed at the other person. I don’t think I’ve smiled so much since...maybe before I enlisted. But then I never was a particularly cheerful person in the best of times.

Glad to hear the doodlebugs have dropped off, at least. Er, not dropped off. Died off. Stopped coming as often. Obviously it would be better if they could get the gas pipes sorted as well, for everyone’s sake. With it almost being winter we’re all going to suffer a great deal more cold and damp. Not looking forward to that at all.

Stay safe,

Fitz

* * *

23 October 1944

Fitz,

I received your last letter yesterday—what was left of it after the censors had finished with it, I mean. I know why they must expunge anything that might possibly hint at location, but it does make it difficult to put together anything more than a vague image of your life. You’ve been in London so you can, perhaps, picture me tootling about the streets in my ambulance; I’ve nothing more than newsreels to give ideas of where you might be. Or might have been, rather, since we only get the newsreels after you’ve moved on from wherever you were, so as not to give anything away. May I hazard a guess that you were at the siege of Dunkirk earlier this month, and perhaps you met someone from what’s left of Czecho-Slovakia? We’ve just now got images of that; though it’s still going on Our Boys aren’t there so they aren’t as concerned about secrecy, I assume. Perhaps that’s just the nature of sieging.

One hears stories of secret codes in letters—not for anything nefarious, but to sneak by information that is harmless in the normal order of things. Oh dear, that sounds nefarious. What I meant is, we don’t want the enemy to know anything about troop movements or activities, but what harm can it do for a wife to know if her husband is in France or North Africa? If they set up a secret code that only the two of them know, that sidesteps the problem nicely. I suppose it couldn’t be a proper code because that would be obvious to anyone halfway clever who’s read enough detective stories. I always enjoyed the coded messages, myself. Did you and Macallister have something like that set up? After she was killed we sent all her letters and belongings to her family, so I admit I have no idea of how long you wrote to each other or how—

Oh, never mind. I should black that bit out myself. It isn’t relevant to the situation. Despite the fact that I have, all my life, been very careful about the things I say, when I write to you I find my hand running away with my pen. You’re the easiest person to speak to I’ve ever known, though I haven’t actually spoken to you at all.

I’ve been out to **{BLACKED OUT}**. They’re quite bad in themselves but the worst of it is never knowing if another might come on top of you while you’re in the middle of it. How one is nostalgic for the days of the doodlebug escapes me, but it is the situation here nonetheless. Better the devil that you know, I suppose.

Ignore anything uncomfortable in this but do give as much information as is safe.

Simmons

* * *

26 October 1944

Simmons,

Starting at the beginning: Your speculation about my past location must go unanswered. Events being what they are you never know what information might be relevant to the Germans at a future date. See what I mean?

Next: It would be a proper code, I think. It would not be a _cipher_ , which would probably, as you say, be immediately obvious to anyone who’s read detective stories. (I have read many detective stories. I also liked Tom Mix serials.) In case you didn’t know, the difference is that ciphers use simple substitutions and codes utilise references to outside material. But Mary and I didn’t have either of those. We didn’t have time to set anything that complicated up. And mostly, she wrote me letters out of pity—or kindness if you prefer—and not because we had a real friendship or anything like that. I happened to run into her at a dance the last time we were in town on leave, that’s all. I didn’t want to be there and I must’ve looked it. She recognised me and spent a good portion of the night talking to me so I wouldn’t be alone while my mates danced, and then said she’d write. No question on my part, only action on hers. Hadn’t I told you that before? I should have, if I didn’t.

Third: I can’t imagine you in your ambulance in London because I don’t know what you look like. Sometimes if I let my imagination go I can imagine what you must be seeing—I fill in my own knowledge of what a street looks like after it’s been bombed, and stop before I get to anything too anatomical. But when I get your letters I hold them for a moment unopened and think about you writing them instead. I always imagine a dark wood desk and a good pen and a cup of tea, even though you said you don’t like reusing the leaves. Maybe I’m imagining an ideal situation. But in an ideal world I suppose you wouldn’t be writing me letters at all, because there wouldn’t be a need to distract yourself from unpleasant realities.

There, you see? You’re not the only one who says more than you mean to. But you didn’t scratch it out so I won’t either.

Stay safe,

Fitz

* * *

29 October 1944

Fitz,

Yes, I see what you mean. Thank you for answering my question so thoroughly.

No, you hadn’t told me how Macallister started writing to you; all I know is that you don’t like when men ask girls they don’t know to write them, so I assumed you had some sort of relationship prior to beginning the correspondence. But it isn’t any of my business, truly, so I shouldn’t have made you feel as though you had to explain it. _I_ feel ashamed of even approaching the question.

This is just a quick note because I’ve just come off a double shift—one of my girls is sick and the...you know...continue without rest, so we must do the same—and I’m nearly asleep on my feet. I’ll write more when I have time again because _I like writing you_ , and am not doing it only to distract either of us. You might write—well, I won’t assume your motivation—but please don’t do yourself such a disservice as to assume no one would care to write you except for their own selfish reasons.

And stay safe, to get that next letter,

Simmons


	3. "It is Terrible and You May Say So" - November & December 1944

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please see the previous chapter note for an explanation of why you think you've read this before.

10 November 1944

Fitz,

By the time you get this, you’ll have no doubt heard that the Germans have obliged us by announcing the new rockets they’ve been sending us over the last few months, so we no longer have to pretend that I’m being called out to deal with casualties from exploding gas mains. The PM’s speech assumed that we would all refuse to give the Germans anything that they might use to “stave off their defeat”—whatever that may be. **{BLACKED OUT}** Regardless, I rather think Hitler could send rockets as often as a summer rain and it wouldn’t make a difference. We are determined that he shall _not_ be victorious no matter what we have to bear. Some days the conviction is all that keeps one going forward, but it is enough. If this letter should somehow fall into enemy hands, they are welcome to that information.

We finally were given a brief description of how the long-range rockets work. You know better than I, of course, how a rocket might operate; apparently these actually go up 60 or 70 miles, fly through the stratosphere, and fall from that great height so quickly that no one can possibly expect to give any reliable warning. This explains a great deal. As I read the description I couldn’t help but think what at pity it is—the amount of work and skill that went into developing that technology, and all it’s used for is sending bombs at people sleeping in their beds. Won’t it be lovely in peacetime when people like you have the leisure to spend making such things for better reasons? And people like me can return to using our knowledge of the human body in less dramatic circumstances (though not, of course, better reasons)? I hope for all our sakes that time comes soon. One shudders to think how many things that ought to be scientific breakthroughs being utilised for destruction instead.

It’s been wet here, as is usual for November. Though I’ve no idea where you are it’s difficult to imagine it being anywhere seasonally dry, so much like your mother I hope you are managing to stave off the damp. If you can manage to keep the clothing nearest your skin from getting wet it does a great deal to avoid the chesty cough that is so prevalent this time of year.

Stay dry—and safe, of course—and I shall do the same,

Simmons

* * *

14 November 1944

Dear Simmons,

The thing of it is that no one can fight a war very long on grand ideals. You may think, going into it, that you’re fighting for Freedom or Our Country but when the shells start whistling overhead (which they do even when you’re an engineer) you’re brought short up against the question “yes, but why am _I_ here?” Sometimes it’s for the fellow next to you. Sometimes it’s because prison doesn’t seem preferable. Sometimes I think it must truly be because you just _cannot_ let them win. If you let them win it will make all the struggle worthless. Eton boys would probably pound me for saying that—there’s meant to be something noble about struggling on in the face of certain defeat or some such rot. And I suppose I don’t think the struggle is worthless if you’re fighting for what’s right; it’s only that when you’re in the middle of war it’s hard to remember what’s right. All your life you’re told it’s wrong to kill people. Then a man wearing a different coloured uniform runs at you and everyone screams at you to kill him and if you don’t manage to shoot your weapon at least you are called on the carpet, assuming you aren’t dead yourself. There seems to be no escaping this outcome, even if you’re an engineer. Even if you spend the majority of your time behind the lines, far away from opportunities of that sort to arise, it comes for you regardless. And then what are you meant to do, Simmons? What’s right?

I suppose that’s a rhetorical question. Being told to kill someone doesn’t make it right to do it.

I didn’t, if you want to know. I managed to shoot—somewhere, I don’t know—and it was enough to make it appear I tried. I can’t be the first corporal in the Royal Engineers to panic under pressure. As long as I don’t make a habit of it I don’t think I’ll even be demoted. No fear! I’ll do anything I can to stay honourably out of it. I’m out of it for a few days now, at least, while the medical boys try everything short of sitting on me to make sure I don’t try to get up and make my knee worse.

As I told my mother, I am staying as dry as humanly possible. The weather **{BLACKED OUT** **}** and everything is pretty miserable, if I’m being entirely honest. I haven’t told her that. But you and I are always honest with each other and I’m too tired to pretend anything else.

Fitz

* * *

17 November 1944

Fitz,

_{several lines of crossed out sentences, none of which appear finished}_

Well, I hope you’re satisfied with the amount of paper you’ve made me waste—it’s still rationed you know, even for writing letters to one’s soldier who has, apparently, been in a combat situation and done something to his knee requiring several days of _medical attention_ and didn’t feel it was important to mention such facts straight away. Out of concern for your delicate condition I crossed out all the sentences above that might be too chastising. Then, once I had got up and made myself a cup of tea with fresh leaves I felt sufficiently calm enough to read the letter again, after which everything I wrote sounded patronisingly mid-Victorian, as though I wanted to fly to your beside and mop your fevered brow. And you weren’t looking for pity, I know, so I won’t give it. You were doing the work in front of you like anyone else, and other men had it worse than you did. See? You don’t even have to write it.

That doesn’t leave me terribly much to say, unfortunately, except ask what I hope are ordinary, level-headed questions: what have you done to your knee? What is being done for your knee? And are you all right, otherwise? Please be as honest as you are able. I understand if you don’t want to share every detail, or if you don’t feel you can. But, as you said to me once, it _is_ terrible and you may say so.

Perhaps you could do with thinking about something else?

The girls have all gone to an “apple cart upset” this afternoon, hoping to find things for Christmas gifts—so they say. In truth I suspect they’re hoping for an evening dress to share; the best dress the unit passed around suffered a tear recently that could not, unfortunately, be mended. It has now been torn up and used to refresh the second-best evening dress. If more than one girl wishes to go to a dance on the same night they now have to ask around the other units, who are historically obliging since everyone is in the same situation, but happening upon an evening with two spare dresses is a near impossibility. With the end of the year nearly upon us no one has any clothing coupons left and the upset is the very last resort. I hope they are successful. The lack of parties has been worse for general morale than anything that’s happened since I’ve been in this command.

That’s terribly dull, I’m sorry. I’ve read a new detective story, but I’d hate to spoil the end; I don’t want to talk about my calls, and paperwork is deadly. Not deadly, exactly, but you know what I mean. And every other thought I’ve had in the week since writing my last letter flew directly out of my head when I realised that yours wasn’t the ordinary sort. Even my tea isn’t soothing in the way it usually is.

Fitz, for all it sounds mid-Victorian or hysterical, I _do_ wish there was something I could do.

Simmons

* * *

19 November 1944

Simmons,

I didn’t mean you to be worried. I almost didn’t tell you at all because it truly isn’t worth worrying about. It’s stupid, even. I stepped in a hole and gave my knee a bit of a wrench while we were running from one place to another. It was all part of the same action, but didn’t have anything to do with the rest of what I wrote you. They put cold compresses on it—as cold as they could manage—and then wrapped it up tightly and that was about all they could do except keep me back a few days to let the worst of the swelling go down. I’m back with the rest now and being allowed to sit as much as reasonable. I hardly even feel it at the end of the day.

Otherwise I am all right. Lying awake in a hospital tent would make anyone question everything. I feel like an apology would be in order, except that you said you wanted honesty. So, honestly: war is ugly and horrible, everything about it. You know as well as I do that things happen and you can’t be as you were before. I am as all right otherwise as I can be.

And, honestly: I don’t mind hearing about second-hand dresses or having a detective story spoiled. In fact, if you’d like to write me the plot of the detective story and leave out the solution so I could have a go at guessing it, I would enjoy that immensely. Or not. Anything you write me, anything at all, is the farthest thing possible from dull.

I’m putting my leg up and drinking tea myself. It tastes like dirty water and is not at all comforting, but the thought of you reading this drinking your own disappointing cup of tea makes it a little better.

I am staying as safe as I can, I promise. You do the same,

Fitz

* * *

10 December 1944

Simmons,

I know I just wrote yesterday and you might get two letters in the same post but I had a thought I couldn’t shake. Don’t know why I didn’t think of it before but now I have I couldn’t wait a week to get the answer: have I seen you? At the dance where I met Mary again. I know she was there with some girls from her unit, and I think I remember a not-very-tall girl with brown hair in a yellow dress. Was that you?

It doesn’t matter, I suppose. I can hardly remember her face. And you wouldn’t have noticed me, if it was you, and you wouldn’t have been very impressed with me if you had. My own face isn’t anything to write home about and it’s even worse when I get sulky. Which I was that night. So maybe it’s better if it wasn’t.

Bother, ignore this. I’m just being ridiculous. Good thing I decided not to wait. This would be a sorry excuse for the only letter of the week.

My knee is fine, stop asking. It aches in **{BLACKED OUT}** but no more than my arm that I broke when I was eight. There’s nothing to be done about that. It would be the same at home. It usually does at this time of year. My mother knits me a new jumper every year to try to fend it off, like I’m a granda with rheumatism, but it doesn’t make a difference. I appreciate her concern—just like I do yours—but honestly, it isn’t as though I’m going to wake up suddenly with it ballooned to the size of my head.

With some shame,

Fitz

* * *

14 December 1944

Fitz,

One would think that the weather would stop the attacks, but I suppose the benefit of the long-range rockets is that they are less dependent on good weather on the ground—the ground they’re meant to hit, I suppose. I don’t know what the weather is like in Germany or wherever they’re coming from. It must be all right since it sounds as though Belgium is getting pounded, poor things. We had a bad one in the early hours this morning; it came down **{BLACKED OUT}**. The Civil Defence crews are likely still there looking through the rubble. It took ages to get to sleep afterwards and one almost wished one hadn’t. No matter how one tries while awake some things refuse to let one alone when one relinquishes control.

Well, that’s terribly distressing. Shall we continue?

Superintendent Battle goes round to Dr. Roberts’ surgery to ask the usual questions and perform the usual search of his papers, etc., before plumping the secretary for more information. _{Here follows a long-ish description of several chapters of_ Cards on the Table _, which are unnecessary to include in this transcription.}_ Any guesses yet?

Never apologise for writing more often. Unfortunately I can say with confidence that whomever you remember couldn’t have been me; I never went to a dance with Macallister. I haven’t gone to one at all since the early years of the war, in fact—partly because I’m not meant to mingle overly much with the girls I’m in command of, but also because I can never make myself behave as one must at such events. The entire purpose is to pretend that we aren’t all facing death in the face every day and yet we _are_ , and I cannot keep myself from wondering how many of the men will be coming home in pieces or not at all. No man would want to dance with a girl like that. I don’t particularly want to dance with them, either. So it’s better for everyone if I stay away.

I did love to dance, though, before all this. When the war is over perhaps I’ll be able to do so again. Or perhaps not. Today it’s hard to imagine a time after the war.

Please stay safe ’til the end, whenever it comes,

Simmons

P.S. Actually, for your edification, your knee _might_ blow up like a balloon. It isn’t beyond the realm of possibility.

* * *

20 December 1944

Fitz,

That’s an ingenious guess, but there’s still a great deal of story left. You can’t possibly expect me to tell you if you’re right already.

It doesn’t surprise me at all that you don’t care to dance. I don’t believe, however, that you are unable to do so, unless your knee is giving you fits. Dancing is entirely a matter of timing and counting, both things at which I assume you excel. And slow dancing isn’t even so complicated as that. If you had a good enough reason I am confident you would manage nicely.

I know letters arrive in very short order but I’ve never attempted to send a parcel, so this may arrive ridiculously early. Though I have always believed in waiting for the proper time to open gifts I understand that not everyone ascribes to that position, so if you wish to have your Christmas presents straightaway I’ll never know. If you plan to wait, however, STOP READING right now.

I would have preferred to send chocolates, but I worried they might be spoiled in the post. Sweets last longer anyway, don’t you think? Easier to ration out. Before you ask, yes, it was my sweet ration but no, you shouldn’t feel an undue sense of gratitude; I really don’t use it myself. At most I keep sweeties in my pockets to offer children I see at the sites, but I’ve more than enough for that at present. As far as the socks go, I feel I ought to apologise for the colour. The yarn had been a filthy green jumper I found at an apple cart upset and I thought I might be able to remove some of the stains, but succeeded only in giving them the most dreadful spots. Another wash with a different type of soap turned them into this hideous sort of puce colour that remains. So much for the scarf I meant to send. The other thing is a sleeve especially for your knee. I hope it fits—I had to make a guess—but you could always tie it on. I’m still not terribly good at knitting. Necessity can only lend so much skill.

The third thing feels foolish. But I was rummaging about in my drawers the other day and came across it and thought—well—should we ever be at the same place by accident, it would be a pity if we were unable to meet because we didn’t recognise it.

Happy Christmas, Fitz. I hope the day finds you well and whole and happy, and that by next Christmas you are home and safe with all your heart could desire.

With best wishes, and warm affection,

Jemma

* * *

25 December 1944

Dear ~~Sim~~ Jemma,

Since you signed your letter with that name I hope it’s all right to use it.

I like to open gifts straightaway but as a favour to you I left them for Christmas Day itself. It wasn’t easy to leave your letter that long and it was an entirely different sort of struggle to keep the parcel pristine. I’m glad I did, though. The other lads were occupied with their own letters and parcels so I was able to enjoy it without getting chaffed—I don’t know what girls are like amongst themselves but men can be like sandpaper on a fellow, always rubbing at things that are nice and making them coarse. (All right, that’s the opposite of what sandpaper does unless you rasp it over your knuckles. I can’t think of another metaphor. I’m not very good at them.) Anyway I wouldn’t have wanted them to make fun of your knitting. I think they’re marvellous, even if you are being precious about my perfectly fine knee. The sleeve fits just right and I can wear it under my uniform without anyone being the wiser. I’m only doing it so your work isn’t wasted, though.

I haven’t written much about what it’s been like here because it’s been pretty miserable. If you were to ask me if my feet are dry, I’d say no. A chesty cough has been my constant companion for a few weeks now. The Germans made matters much worse the other day and we have all had to **{BLACKED OUT}**. Somehow, though, I don’t mind any of that today, with a sweet in my mouth and handmade socks on my feet. Thank you. I can’t really tell you how much it means. Words don’t seem enough.

I’ve got your picture propped up in front of me as I write. Now when I write I can imagine you opening the letter and—I hope—smiling over it. I think I’m smiling myself now.

I hope you had a happy Christmas. Let’s all hope all of this is a distant memory next year—everything we don’t want to remember, that is. I want to remember this moment.

Fitz


	4. "Damn the English Language" - January & February 1945

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Okay, here's the new stuff! Thank you for your patience.

8 January 1945

Dear Fitz,

It’s difficult to imagine _liking_ my work. Whereas from what you say of yours you are generally doing things similar in nature to peacetime tasks, my daily business is very different. If we were not at war, I would not be intimately familiar with the myriad ways to reach twenty different hospitals in **{BLACKED OUT}** ; I would not have fingernails constantly rimmed with brick dust; I would not know what a person looks like just before they die. Even the smell of blood is different in the open air. I never meant to come this near life and death. I only wanted to learn about it—bloodlessly, I suppose. Which was naïve, really. A girl dreaming of making a difference in the world doesn’t realise that to make a mark one must actually interact with reality, and that always takes a toll. Like poor Marie Curie, though perhaps not always to that extreme.

Even so, I’m glad to be doing the work. On bad days it seems as though all one does is cart corpses about, but one doesn’t, really, and in fact one likely saves people who would otherwise die. I’d rather do that than type everlasting forms or cook for everlasting soldiers. And all of it is better than sitting helplessly on one’s hands. I have never been terribly good at staying quietly at home. My father has often said it’s a mercy I wasn’t born during Victoria’s reign.

Anyway, whether I like the work or not it’s there to be done, and as I am rather good at it I suppose it’s better for me to do than someone who isn’t. Command seems to agree; I’ve recently been given a promotion and am now officially Staff Sergeant Simmons—a good bit of alliteration and a role I’m not certain I deserve. Needs must, I suppose. Any future mail should be addressed thusly to be certain to reach me. I’ve also been transferred to another location, but that doesn’t matter to you. It’s all the same in the GPO [ _General Post Office – ed._ ]. (As is everything, of course. Have you ever stopped to think about how our addresses are technically the same, though we’ve never been in the same place—in fact you have been in x number of places in the time we’ve been writing? It does make one feel very close and very far at the same time.)

Let’s see, where had we got to? Rhoda went to see Mrs Oliver to explain Anne Meredith’s strange behaviour—apparently Anne had been ladies’ maid in a house where the woman mistakenly drank hat paint and died, I think. The next bit after that, Anne Meredith meets Mrs Lorrimer coming from a house in Harley Street and they have a conversation over tea about how coming to the end of one’s life makes one question what’s been worthwhile. Rhoda and Anne then have a conversation about Major Despard and which of them he fancies. Which do you think? And does it matter if he’s a murderer?

One of my favourite authors has given up writing detective novels during the war; she doesn’t think it’s fitting to make death into a game when it stalks our every move. I do understand that position. On the other hand, when one is _always_ in danger of suddenly coming to the end of one’s life it’s refreshing to read about tidy little murders rather than think about thousands of people dying by bad luck. Happily, though there is a shortage of nearly everything, there is no shortage of detective stories to be had from the library.

Please stay safe, and I will do the same,

Jemma

* * *

_[sent with a parcel containing two thick bunches of letters from Jemma to Fitz, which has “I’m not dead, don’t worry” scrawled across the wrapping - ed.]_

17 January 1945

Dear Jemma,

I do see your point about murder as a character flaw, but will not be argued out of my position. My logic is as follows:

  1. Major Despard is the kind of character who always ends up being a Good Egg.
  2. As Poirot has already said that only one of the four suspects could be innocent of the suspected first murder, that makes Anne Meredith guilty.
  3. Thus Despard will be in love with Rhoda.
  4. Who also seems like a good egg.



It’s all rubbish to say that I can’t know what they’re like just by how you describe them. I know what you’re like and you very seldom describe yourself. And when you do you don’t [ _scratched out]_ flatter yourself so I am forced to put all the clues together on my own.

I had started writing this in a spare minute and then put it aside, so you’ll forgive the sudden change in tone. In between the last paragraph and this one we’ve been told that they’re going to be inspecting our gear for letters—we’re meant to destroy them after reading them because they don’t want them falling into enemy hands and inadvertently giving away sensitive information, though what’s left after the censors are through I couldn’t guess. I haven’t been doing so, though. At first I thought there wouldn’t be very many, and then I—well, I just didn’t want to. They aren’t so heavy and we don’t move as much as the main forces. It’s been all right. But now it’s either burn them or get rid of them another way, so I’ve sent them back. I hope that’s all right. Perhaps I should have sent them home to my mother instead. But I didn’t quite know how to explain—and I didn’t want to do it poorly—and anyway it seems that your letters, if they don’t belong to me, should belong to you. They’re full of you. I couldn’t just post them to someone who you hadn’t trusted to read them. If I can say that you trust me. I hope you do. At the very least this should prove my trustworthiness.

I don’t mean I want you to stop writing. If you stopped I don’t know—it wouldn’t be anything drastic, I promise, but everything would seem bleaker than it already does. Which is quite bleak enough. And I’ll keep writing to you, of course, as long as I can.

I’d like to wrench this back to something cheerful but it’s rather difficult, so I’ll just post it and hope for the best.

Your friend,

Fitz

* * *

22 January 1945

Dear Fitz,

They’re yours, still. I will keep them for you but they’re yours, and as soon as you’re done doing whatever it is, and the war ends and you come home, I will give them back. I’m also going to copy out any letters that I write until you tell me otherwise so you’ll have a complete set when you return. Don’t mind, then, if they’re shorter? It will take twice as long.

Oh, bother, that was a blast and I’m on duty—

_Late the same night_

Fitz, that was horrible, more horrible than I’ve seen for months—they can’t possibly be able to aim them but you wouldn’t know it sometimes. I don’t know how many runs I made and a woman died in the back of the ambulance; I could hear her breath stop even over the sirens and other traffic. One really can’t believe, sometimes, how very like a nightmare one’s life is. The same strange light and terrible sense that one can never do enough to make things come out right. Perhaps one can’t. I had to take a bath straight after getting back because I wouldn’t have been able to sleep with the smells in my hair, and now I’m all but crouching over the gas flame in what will be a futile attempt to dry it because it’s so dreadfully cold and we can’t afford much gas and everything else is rationed. But I can’t go to bed with my hair wet or I’ll wake up with icicles in it, and I _mustn’t_ be ill because we’re already stretched thin as it is. At—oh, what is it—three o’clock in the morning everything seems particularly dreadful. And who knows where you’ll be when you get this letter—should you ever get it, because every time I write I have to stop myself thinking “yes, but what if _this_ is the letter that gets returned?” And I can’t help but worry that this new strictness means you’ll be headed into danger and oh, Fitz, I couldn’t _bear_ it if something happened to you. In the daytime after a proper night’s sleep I manage to realise that of course I would, as so many people must do, but just at present I am perfectly clear as to the bitter struggle it would be. How do women manage who have husbands in the main forces? How does your mother live with the pressing weight of worry for you she must feel every moment of the day?

Forgive the blots. Some of it has dripped from my wet hair and some—well, you must be able to guess. You’re clever enough. I can’t write more now.

_23 rd._

Reading this over in the morning I know my mother would counsel tearing the whole thing from end to end; I’ve revealed rather more of my heart than is judicious. As you have it in your hand you will know that I did not listen to my mother’s unsought (but perhaps wise?) advice. You weren’t asking for proof that I trust you—you wouldn’t do such an overbearing thing—but here it is, regardless. If it turns out I ought to have done what my mother said I hope you’ll forgive this as an aberration.

 ~~Affectionately Yours~~ ~~Fondly~~ ~~Damn the English Language~~ ,

Jemma

* * *

25 January 1945

Dear Jemma,

Some of your paragraph got blacked out but I can guess at the circumstances, and the—the important part made it through. Look, I told you when you first started writing and I’ll tell you as often as you need until you believe me: write anything, anything at all, and I will carry it around in my jacket pocket until it falls apart. I could get a letter with every other word blacked out and I wouldn’t care.

I’m sorry for it. Not for what you wrote, but why you wrote it. It’s cold here, too. I wear gloves with the fingers cut off and your Christmas socks over the regulation pair, and frostbite is still a constant concern. We are in danger, but only because we’re in danger all the time. That’s war. (It’s war for you, too, Jemma. Don’t think that because your chance of running into a German is pretty small that you aren’t just as in it as we are.) And I worry about you. Most of the time I manage to forget that we only write because a girl I knew when she wore her hair in pigtails got killed, but some days it gets to be too much. So I know all the things you wrote like the back of my hand, because I feel them all too and we have a great many more three o’clocks here. It’s a bad time of night. It’s all right.

As for the rest. I wish I could say “nothing’s going to happen to me”—some men do, I know. “Don’t worry, Mam, I’ll come through all right”—“I promise, Jean, nothing can happen”. I don’t know how they manage it. Something dreadful could happen to me at any moment, to you as well—I think about it more often than I probably should say. I don’t think there is an answer to how people bear something happening to people they care about. All I can do is hope we never have to find out.

_[a long line, all of which is scratched out]_

Fitz

* * *

3 February 1945

Dear Fitz,

I don’t know if it’s worse to be waiting, knowing something will happen but not knowing when, or continuing along in a drudge expecting that nothing will change.

Of course at present we do both, so perhaps either on its own would be preferable. Every day one wakes up and does paperwork, takes care of the motors, eats because one must, attempts to keep oneself looking presentable, stands in lines to get one’s share of whatever meat or meat substitute is going today, and then goes to sleep. But the whole time one knows at any moment something could come screaming through the sky to shake the whole day to bits. (Though we only had one bad rocket today and the doodlebugs are few and far between now. It’s been a good day from that front. Yesterday two bad ones had every ambulance scrambling—not as many deaths, I expect, but a great many injuries. I can’t help but wonder where they _are_ falling, then.)

That’s only the daily course, though. In the wider scheme, day follows day and night follows night, and at present it doesn’t seem likely to change. I don’t mean to diminish what you men are doing, or the Americans in the Philippines, only it’s been going on _so long_ , Fitz, and every step forward stalls. Something may happen—likely something dreadful—but will it make a difference? One always hopes so. And yet it’s exhausting to continue hoping indefinitely.

Poirot has Anne Meredith and Rhoda around for tea and asks Miss Meredith to describe the room, as he’s done to everyone else. She doesn’t remember much beyond flowers and some cases of jewellery. At the end of their time, he asks her to please choose the best stockings from the seventeen or eighteen different pair of very expensive French stockings he’s bought to give as a Christmas gift to his nieces while he shows Rhoda the weapon from _Murder on The Orient Express_. (Have you read that book, by the way? A glorious solution.) When they leave, he counts the stockings: there are two fewer pair than there ought to be. Imagine here, if you please, dramatic music. The question for you to answer: what does this tell Poirot about Anne Meredith?

Of course the amusing thing is that nowadays it wouldn’t say anything particular; I know loads of otherwise scrupulous young ladies who would find it equally impossible to resist a really good pair of French silk stockings. American soldiers are much preferred among the ranks for their ability to procure such treats—goodness knows _how_. It isn’t as though they receive them as part of their ration. I’m wild to know but have no way of satisfying this curiosity. I don’t come in contact with Americans very often, except by accident, and one can scarcely ask a man one’s just run over on the Tube platform “excuse me, but how do you get stockings to give away?” It would be mortifying.

I went to see a film yesterday; a rocket will come down where it comes down and there’s nothing to be done about it. It was a very silly film about love thwarted and meddling parents, but it made us laugh and there was a happy ending. I’d rather not see one without, anymore. Before the show there was of course a newsreel and I wondered as I always do if I’ve seen you in one of them without knowing it. Very unlikely, I realise. They aren’t prone to showing the RCME at their business. But I find myself examining every not-very-tall man who looks as though he might have curly hair just on the off chance, regardless.

Please stay safe,

Jemma

* * *

7 February 1945

Jemma,

Like you can promise I didn’t see you at that dance, I can promise you didn’t see me in a newsreel. I’ve never been anywhere there’s been a camera. Even during the invasion we had already moved into France too far to be seen. That’s what happens when you support prestigious divisions. But you would be hard pressed to notice me, anyway. The only thing that really distinguishes me is my cleverness and that’s hardly apparent from just looking at me.

I’ve taken too long over that last paragraph so I’m afraid I can’t say anything much about the detective plot. More important is that I found out about the stockings for you. I know a fellow who **{SEVERAL LINES BLACKED OUT}**. To make a very long story somewhat short, he said that American GIs get paid a great deal more than we do (no secret there) and that they actually have stockings available to them in their canteen. With extra cash in hand and everything else taken care of they can afford to give stockings to their girlfriends. “So we’re out of luck,” he told me, even though—well—it was a general we. But if what you say is true I don’t know why a girl would stick to a English ~~or Scottish~~ boyfriend. We can’t offer anything much on our wages and have a lot less charm than the Yanks.

In my opinion it’s much worse to know that something will happen and have to wait for it. Think of the difference between the doodlebugs and the rockets. When you can hear the noise you have all that time to wonder if you’re going to be killed, but with the rockets you simply are killed without the worry beforehand. Much preferable. This is particularly the case when the thing is dreadful—like a bomb or a battle—but true even when the thing is nice. For example, **{BLACKED OUT}**. So your letter has sat in my pocket for two days so I can read it in snatches and am only now able to scribble out a few lines before **{BLACKED OUT}**.

When your life is a long line of dullness, it does make it difficult to hope. I agree with this, wholeheartedly. The thing of it is, my life has often seemed like it would continue as it always had done and then something happens when I’m not expecting it, usually something that began while I wasn’t paying attention. The war was like that. And all the things that happen in the war, too—nothing, nothing, nothing, and then everything at once. That’s been the case enough times in my life that I have learnt not to be too worried about things not changing. They will, sometime. Even if they get worse they’ll be different. And most times they don’t get worse. When Mary died I thought I would never get a letter again, and then I got yours.

Look, Jemma, I think **{BLACKED OUT}**. If so, my letters might come less often for a bit, but I don’t want you to worry about me in the middle of everything else you’ve got on. I’ll be as safe as I can possibly manage. I wanted to get this off before, just in case.

Fitz

* * *

10 February 1945

Dear Fitz,

I always am worried for you. Is that too much to say as an Englishwoman? Is that too much to say in this friendship? It’s true regardless and I can’t feel sorry. I should feel anxious for anyone I knew in such a situation and since I know you better than I do most people I am naturally more concerned for your safety and health. As you’ve asked me not to worry, though, I shall keep any anxious thoughts to myself; they can hardly do you any good wherever you are, whatever you’re doing. We understand that there has been an assault actually into Germany. I hope for those soldiers’ sake that the post continues to be uninterrupted.

I wish so much that the censors hadn’t cut out the story of how you found out about the stockings for me—I would have enjoyed it—but I can’t help but feel indulged even so. Information is better than silk stockings. As far as American boyfriends go, I expect you are familiar with the old saw: “over-sexed, over-paid, and over here”? I’ve been thinking about that this week as one of the girls had her GI around on Sunday and I ended the two hours more exhausted than I have been after a double shift. There’s something so wide-open about them that I find tiring. Not to mention they all seem to have the attitude that we ought to be grateful for their mere presence—in the war, at our dances, when they show up for tea. Really they ought to be grateful to _us_ that we managed to hold out against Hitler long enough that he didn’t get them on the right side whilst the Japanese got them on the left. I know I don’t speak for every girl, but I’d rather one of my own countrymen no matter what other benefits Americans might have on offer.

Even more than the information about stockings, though, I appreciate the picture of you reading my letters in snatches. That feels very comfortable, as though we lived next door to each other and kept running in and out of each other’s gardens as we had things to say. Actually I find myself having things to say to you all the time anyway. When _your_ letters come, I sit down at once to read them and then spend the whole day planning what I’m going to write back. After doing so, of course, I’ve closed the door on anything else I might include and so I must content myself with regular “I must remember to tell Fitz,” or “Fitz would like that,” or “I wonder what Fitz would think?” for the next week, until you write again. If I were able to write everything I meant to say you would be buried under an avalanche of post. But perhaps burning all those letters would keep you warmer, so it might be a benefit in the long run?

Do stay safe. I am allowed to say that much at least, I hope? Because I mean it with all my heart.

Affectionately,

Jemma


	5. "When You Write I Remember There's a World Outside" - February & March 1945

20 February 1945

Dear Jemma,

There’s nothing much to say today—anything I could write you of what’s going on here would be blacked out and I haven’t got the ability to piffle on about things tonight. Maybe it would have been better to wait until there was something worth writing about, but don’t know when that will be. It’s not fair to make you wait and worry just because we’re in a bit of a jam. And anyway there’s something nice about sitting here with you, even if we don’t have anything to say.

No one ever tells you about war that it numbs your mind. I think we know to expect the tedium, the moral conflict, and so on, but you don’t really understand how the act of being at war eventually overwhelms everything else that goes on in your life—not just your body, but your thoughts, too. I always used to have more ideas than I knew what to do with, but the longer I’m here the more I forget to think about anything besides picking up one foot and then picking up the other. Not, you know, literally. I can walk without thinking about it. But whatever the next thing in front of me is. It’s never been so quiet in my head. All the booms and bang echo. There were poets in the last war, weren’t there? I don’t know how they managed. Except, I do, maybe: when you write I remember there’s a world outside whatever muddy patch of ground I’m presently squatting on. I haven’t got anything to make my letters worth reading in return, I know, but I’ll rely on your generosity to keep writing even when I’m dull. In a better time I would be a much better correspondent, I promise.

One of the men has a wireless going very, very quietly. We’re waiting for the BBC to give us the news bulletin. I expect it’ll be mostly about the bombing in Dresden still—that’s all it’s been for the last week—but maybe something else will make it through. It makes a difference, to know what home folks know, and the announcers somehow manage to turn what we experience as a muddy, hopeless slog into something approaching a victory march. Is it true? Is it kind? I don’t know. But it helps anyway. They’re playing Vera Lynn now: “We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when...” I think I’ve heard that song every time the wireless has been on in the last six months. I hate it. Not the song itself—she sings very well and it’s all right as a tune—but the sentiment. All these songs about coming back to someone who’s been waiting for you get on my nerves. It’s wishful thinking, and it makes all the rest sound like wishful thinking too. If there isn’t anyone to meet again, will there be a sunny day to meet in, after all?

I told you I would be right about Major Despard, and I think there’s something fishy about Mrs Lorrimer too. I don’t know how much of the book is left but I haven’t forgotten that Harley Street visit. She’d be a convenient scapegoat.

Forgive this melancholy letter. One of my mates was killed yesterday—I didn’t see it happen, which makes it harder to believe somehow. It’ll come in time. It always does.

Fitz

* * *

20 February 1945

Dear Fitz,

News Bulletin from the Home Front: First Crocus of the Spring Spotted By Staff Sergeant!

This afternoon I was coming back from the shopping and I decided, on a whim, to walk through the churchyard rather than go round by the streets. It’s a bit shorter but not so near to shelters, but I was successful today on my errands and didn’t fancy carrying the armful of potted meat all that way. It’s an old church that’s been mostly untouched by the bombs—it’s funny how that works—and the churchyard is very peaceful, somehow, wandering through the paths among the gravestones that have been there longer than anyone alive now. It snowed yesterday and there’s still clean patches of white where people haven’t walked—and there, in one of them, a deep purple crocus unfurled like a bit of bunting. Oh, don’t laugh. I know I’m not generally so romantic but it deserved a silly metaphor; it was so beautiful I stopped to stare at it until my arm went numb. And the whole time I was looking at it I thought, “Fitz must know about this. I can’t forget to tell him that spring is coming, that there’s life in the graveyard, that I saw something beautiful today.” So rather than try to remember until it’s my turn to write again, I decided to write you straightaway. I hope that it brings you as much hope as it brought me.

Affectionately,

Jemma

* * *

3 March 1945

Dear Jemma,

**{A WHOLE PARAGRAPH BLACKED OUT.}**

That’s them, though. We **{BLACKED OUT}**. On the one hand, they’ve been getting the brunt of it and deserve **{BLACKED OUT}** , but it hasn’t precisely been a picnic for us either. If you happen to chauffeur around any generals you might mention that the 275th Engineers could use a rest.

After writing all that I realise that it’ll probably be blacked out. I’ll leave it in case something gets through, and to save on paper. If the Germans were smart, they’d go after the censors. They must surely know everything that’s going on with everyone, much more than any Resistance ringleader or general in London.

Yet another day I can’t tell you what I’ve been up to—something different than usual, but that makes it even more secret of course. One of the men asked me the other day what I fill up my letters with when we can’t say anything about what we’re doing or seeing. He didn’t believe me that we write about detective stories. Apparently most men—actually, no, I’m not going to repeat what he told me most men write. One of my mates said it was foul-mouthed but accurate in practice: when you can’t write about your present you tend to focus on the past or the future. I didn’t tell them that the present is all that you and I have ever had, so what else do we have to talk about? Things not related to ourselves at all.

Speaking of detective stories, I’m ready to guess the solution to _Cards on the Table_ : Dr Roberts killed Mrs Lorrimer, Mrs Lorrimer killed her husband, Anne Meredith killed Shaitana, Major Despard didn’t kill anyone and loves Rhoda. I get a point for each thing I’ve got correct and if it’s all five...some sort of prize. Don’t know what it could be so I’ll leave it up to you—you’re cleverer than I am, anyway. Don’t let it go to your head.

Fitz

* * *

6 March 1945

Dear Fitz,

Well, hardly any of _that_ arrived. They did let through that you think you need a rest; perhaps they feel the same? As for speaking to the generals, I’m afraid that any chauffeuring I have done is for decidedly less prestigious officers who could hardly affect the movement of armies. The really posh people are ferried around by drivers in regular ATS units who do it as their usual work, and even so I don’t believe they’d take strategy advice from the ATS. I did hear of a girl who managed to get herself engaged to a warrant officer of some kind, but that requires—well, a different sort of conversation, I expect, and not one I could imagine myself engaging in. The whole idea rather baffles me in practice. How does one make a wartime acquaintance, which must of necessity exist firmly in the present, become something that both parties agree to make last for one’s whole life? And how does that happen at the same time for two people who have so many other things to be getting on with? One must be very bold about one’s feelings, and I don’t know how one gets up the courage when things could so easily go to smash.

You’re right, of course. I ought to make you explain how you came to your conclusions since there’s no fun in having the solution without the proof to support it, but it won’t change the result. Though I’ve been pondering it all day, the only things I can think to offer as a prize for such a feat of detective insight as that would be I couldn’t send in a package. Sweets don’t seem enough. Please don’t take this as an admittance that you are cleverer than I am; the grand ideas that I’ve had today would take your breath away if I could manage them. So let me ask instead: if you could have anything, anything at all—logistics and reason aside—what would it be?

We’ve had a bad few weeks. With our push into Germany I think we all rather expected the rockets to drop off (oh lord, will one ever break oneself of that) but they’re coming thicker instead. Perhaps they’re feeling threatened and attempting to use up what they have before they’re prevented from shooting any more off. No rationing of rockets for Herr Hitler! It’s terrible for us, of course, but for the first time in ages one can hope that the end is in sight. Yesterday we had only two incidents and, though I was on duty, I wasn’t called out to either. Perhaps someday soon ambulance runs will be the exception rather than the rule! Can you imagine?

Affectionately,

Jemma

* * *

13 March 1945

Dear Jemma,

I hadn’t heard from you for much longer than is normal and I was starting to get worried, but they brought the post in today along with the news that the BAPO [ _Base Army Post Office – ed._ ] got hit last week, so your last letter probably got lost with the rest of the delivery in all that mess. (Only one injury and none killed, which seems miraculous to me.) They’ve moved it now and service continues as regularly as before. It’s really remarkable how clockwork it is—even with **{BLACKED OUT}** I don’t think I’ve missed a letter yet. All this to say whatever you wrote me after my last letter, I didn’t receive. But you’ll have a copy, I think, so you can tell me if there was anything important. Unless you aren’t still doing that. Which I understand, if you aren’t. You have many other things to be doing rather than writing to me twice.

In the last week we’ve **{BLACKED OUT}** so my whinging was unnecessary. I am hopeful **{BLACKED OUT}** but of course I know less than nothing. We get bits of rumours from every angle and it’s anyone’s guess which of them is real. There was one fellow who guessed right several times in a row and got the nickname Brahan (actually, you likely don’t know about Brahan. He was a seer in the 1600s, I think) but his predictions recently have been so far wrong they could be about a different front entirely, so it’s a bit of a joke now. Such is the life of a soldier. I expect you know this as well as I do.

As a return for your story about seeing the crocus a few weeks ago, I offer you a bird. That is, I heard a bird this morning—where it was, I can’t tell you, because even if I _could_ tell you without risking an angry black mark it wouldn’t explain where any bird has managed to find food or a nest. France was terrible and **{BLACKED OUT}**. The last four years have been terrible for everyone. And we’ve been hearing only war noises for so long that we almost didn’t recognise it when we heard it, thinking it was a motor that needed oiling at first. But a bird it was, singing its heart out off in the distance. We stood outside the shop and all but saluted, it was so good to hear.

It’s amazing, isn’t it, that something so small, something we’d’ve not thought anything about a few years ago, can make everything seem like it’s going to be all right again? That, and knowing there’s a perfectly good reason you haven’t written and I can look forward to a letter again soon.

Fitz

* * *

16 March 1945

Dear Fitz,

I’m so relieved to hear from you. You did say not to worry if your letters didn’t come quite as frequently so I made every effort to do as you asked, but the postal service has been so consistent that it seemed more likely that something had gone wrong. Thank goodness it was only the PO. Now that I have this letter in hand and look at the date on your last I see it’s really only been ten days—but that’s the longest we’ve gone without writing, and anything can happen to anyone in so very short a time.

As for my last, I didn’t say anything terribly important. At the time we were going through a particularly bad patch of incidents so I wrote a bit about that. That hasn’t let up, unfortunately. It’s still nothing like it was in the fall so I can’t and won’t complain. And I asked you what you would like for your prize for guessing the end of the book. I have plenty of ideas but not any that would be easy to send in a parcel. Fortunate when you think about it; if I had sent something it wouldn’t have got to you anyway. If you think of anything you want I could get it’s yours. Anything else you can read when you come to get your packets of letters—because I am still keeping them, yes, and will continue to do so until you tell me otherwise.

Do you know, I had never considered that the letters I’m keeping for you aren’t actually the letters you’re receiving. I’ve no way to know unless you tell me what the censors cut out, and until you said you hadn’t missed a letter I had no proof that everything I wrote got through. It would only be circumstantial. So if you come to get your letters— _when_ you come to get your letters—you’ll be reading things you’ve never read before. I knew a girl on my staircase who was reading History and had rather a bee in her bonnet about some missing letters of Queen Elizabeth she thought must exist somewhere. “If we could just find them,” she used to say, “we’d understand everything about Dudley and Mary Stuart.” Who can tell what things you’ll understand once you read our letters in their whole?

Thank you so much for sharing about the bird. If the mere fact of your letter hadn’t made spring come, that would have certainly done so.

Affectionately,

Jemma

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The BAPO getting hit is a historical fact, in case you were wondering!


	6. "I Can't Say All I Want To" - March - May 1945

23 March 1945

Jemma,

I’m writing this letter now, before we go over the top—I’ll keep it with me and send it once we’ve come through so there won’t be any secrets to hide. Or I’ll ask one of my mates to send it, in case I can’t. It’s a real possibility this time.

Tonight we’re going to cross the Rhine River. There’s rumour that some of the Americans have already gone over this morning, but our boys are meant to cross tonight under good old Monty _[ed. General Bernard Montgomery]_ and be the main push. As an engineer you know that I seldom see the first and worst of the actual fighting, but this manoeuver we’re about to attempt requires my kind to lead the way. We’ve been preparing for several weeks and I think we’re as ready as we can be. If we manage it, it will be a good one in the eye for Hitler. I think there’s a good chance. And then we’ll be in Germany, after all this time trying to get there. That will be worth whatever it takes, surely. Whatever it takes.

It’s hard to hold your life in your hands and think, “is winning this war actually worth me, personally, dying?” It’s funny. With all the things we’ve talked about we’ve never talked about that, even though we have to look it in the face every single day. I don’t want to die. It’s not so much the being dead that bothers me as it is the not-life. I think I’ve got a good deal more I could do with my life if I get to live it—a good deal more that I _want_ to do. And yet I’ve been at the front long enough to know that wanting to live doesn’t make you more likely to do it, nor does being able to offer the world something in return for your life. And if I’m dead I won’t mind. It’s just now, thinking of things I might never get the chance to do.

Look, Jemma, one of those things. I’ve been trying to think how to say it—if I could even say it in a letter—I’m not very good with words and everything I think of, when I write it down, looks like an embarrassing attempt at bad poetry. But here it is. When you wrote me back that first time—not to tell me about Mary Macallister, but about the doodlebugs—you sounded as weary and lonely as I was feeling, and though I am not very brave and never have been I thought maybe you wouldn’t mind if someone, even a stranger, told you it was all right. I am grateful every day that I did. I feel so lucky that you wrote back that time and all the others. Writing with you has been the best thing that ever happened to me in my life.

I’m almost to the bottom of the page and the time we’re meant to go, so I can’t say all I want to. But maybe that’s for the best. The things I want to say aren’t fair in this sort of letter—not any letter, really. I probably shouldn’t have even begun. But I couldn’t risk something happening without at least giving you some idea of what your letters—no, if I’m going to die I won’t hide from the truth like a coward—you have meant to me.

Yours, truly,

Fitz

* * *

28 March 1945

Dear Fitz,

Dearest Fitz, darling Fitz, blessed, blasted Fitz,

I don’t know what to say. How _could_ you, Fitz, write a letter like that where you say everything and nothing, where you give me every hope and at the same time every opening to doubt? _Are_ you mine, truly, or are you just glad that we don’t have to be lonely as long as we keep writing, and when the war is done we’ll become strangers to each other again? I’ve thought of both these paths, and a hundred more, in the many three o’clocks since the first one. Do you realize I don’t even know your first name? or what colour your eyes are, or whether you whistle or hum while you work, or anything I had always assumed one needed to know before caring for someone?

Fitz, _do_ I care for you? Of course. That’s been obvious for some time. The more important question: is it something more than mere caring? And that I’ve asked myself again and again. I’m so pathetically English; I have hardly any practice naming an emotion stronger than fondness. But this fierceness I feel for you, this bruise-like tenderness, this habit of missing you every minute—I don’t know what else it can be, do you? Or am I the only one?

Oh please, Fitz, don’t let me be the only one. _Fitz_.

It seems to me that we’ve been tiptoeing around what we are and, perhaps, what we could become for a long time now. Well, I’ve scarcely been tiptoeing! If you had got that letter that was lost, I’m almost embarrassed to imagine what you would have made of my musings on how two people who meet by accident in a war can parlay that into a future together. You’re right, though, of course. This isn’t the time or place to be saying these things. You could die tomorrow, or I could—I could get flattened by a rocket on my way back from posting this letter and you wouldn’t know anything about it for a week. A week where you would live in bliss—or not—I don’t know—and perhaps you would be distracted, either way, and make some mistake that would kill _you_. I understand why you weren’t more explicit, and no matter how much I foolishly wish otherwise, I’m glad you were not. We can’t say this now, even if we feel it.

So I won’t post this letter. I never meant to. Only somehow my letters to you have become the only place I’m able to be anything other than determined and resolute, so this was the only way to sort everything out. I’m going to keep it, of course, in the packet with the rest, and when you come home, you can have it along with the others. And then—I don’t know what will happen, though I know what I _hope_ will happen.

In the meantime, because no one but me will know:

All my love,

Jemma

P.S. Of course this is really the coward’s way out, because I know that if you were in front of me I would never, never be able to say _any_ of this, no matter how much gin I’d had. I can never say the things that matter the most to me, and this matters more than anything ever has.

P.P.S. Yes, that settles it.

* * *

28 March 1945

Dear Fitz,

Thank you very much for indicating on the envelope that you had sent it yourself. I’m not surprised, because you are generally very conscientious about such things, but reading the letter I couldn’t help but imagine myself receiving it and not knowing what had happened to you. I would have been positively wild. Especially knowing, as we do now, exactly what you were up to. England is very proud of you—I can’t speak for Scotland, though I expect they are as well—and I could scarcely be prouder if I had done it myself. Still, it must have been very terrible. I hope, if you find you must let some of the horrors out, you know that I will hear anything the censors allow through.

If there’s anything your last letter proves beyond question, it’s that you _are_ brave—terribly brave, more so than I have ever been or could be. It takes a great deal of courage to knowingly walk towards death when you want so very much to live but it takes more, I think, to expose your fears and feelings. You can only die once in the body, after all; there are other deaths that are worse. I won’t pretend I don’t know what that required of you. In all the years of war I have never known anyone be so honest. In all the years of my life, even. I am honoured, Fitz, to be the recipient of your...will you be very embarrassed if I say heart? I don’t mean more by it than you are willing to give. But you ought to know that I take what you said very seriously and guard it like the most terrible dragon in a fairy story.

Don’t regret what you wrote—don’t think you were wrong to do so—I don’t regret it, and you weren’t. But, as I said, you are much braver than I. I can’t yet match your courage, for all the reasons you already know and others beside. Please read that very carefully: I can’t _yet match your courage._ What I can say is that your kindness to recognise a lonely girl and bravery to extend a compassionate hand have been the best thing, I think, to ever happen to me, too.

Write back when you can. And if it’s at all possible, could you send a picture of yourself? God forbid anything happen now, but when it’s dark at night and I think “but what if I’ve already received the last letter without knowing it?” I am sometimes hard-pressed to remember I haven’t imagined the whole thing. You do exist in the real world, don’t you? When you walk your boots leave prints in the ground? I am a scientist, you know, and I begin to require evidence. Much better would be to have you before me subject to examination, but a photograph shall do in the meantime.

I wish so much that I didn’t have to close the letter. You can never read it if I never send it, of course, and goodness knows it’s ridiculous to write letters you’ll never read. Still, it gets lonesome only speaking to you in my head.

Jemma

P.S. I almost forgot to mention: we didn’t have a single bomb today! Not even a doodlebug, much less a rocket. I can’t believe it will last, but every day without a raid is thanks to your efforts.

* * *

1 April 1945

Jemma,

Honestly, sending you this photo feel rather like an All Fools’ joke, but since you did ask for it and my mother taught me it’s good manners to give a lady what she asks for, it should be in the envelope unless it’s already fallen into your lap. Don’t laugh, please. I’m the one that will be mostly covered by your left thumb—I don’t think you can see my hair under my helmet and it’s difficult to see how tall anyone is since we’re standing on a hill. Musgrave towered over us, for all he was built like a reed. Oh—this is a bit of an old snap from when we were in Italy. Lately we’ve been **{BLACKED OUT}** and haven’t had time to muck about with cameras, much less darkrooms, but I happened to have this. These lads went through training with me and I’m the only one left now. Maybe it’s better for you to keep it; I’d hate to lose it.

So yes, I hope this proves that I am real to your satisfaction. When the war ends maybe—well, maybe.

I think the rockets stopping, if they are stopping, would be more due to **{BLACKED OUT}** but I will take whatever credit you care to give. The Rhine crossing was more horrible than I want to write about. I’d rather not think about it either but I can’t seem to help that. For now, at least—eventually it will fade like everything else. Or something even more horrible will come along to replace it. The really terrible thing about war is that it can turn, just like _that_ , and goodness knows we aren’t out of danger yet. But I think we might be heading that way. We of the 275th are still busily digging and building like ants, but it seems that the fighting men are finding their path ahead easier than expected. The Germans aren’t putting up much of a fight. And no matter how much I tell myself they could just be regrouping for some fresh hell, I can’t quite make myself believe it.

All that sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? And this an All Fools’ letter. I may be a fool in the end, and I’m not so foolish enough to forget there’s Japan once we finish off Hitler—at least I expect we’ll have to go over and help the Yanks since they’ve been helping us—but for some reason I can’t help but feel hopeful, in spite of everything. Perhaps it’s the riot of birds that have taken up residence in the stand of trees that border the camp. Perhaps it’s something else.

Fitz

* * *

4 April 1945

Fitz,

I know exactly what you mean. It’s a bit early for the really nice weather to begin but it does rather seem as though the sun is always shining these days. Whether it is or isn’t I couldn’t rightly say, only it is somewhere under my sternum and that makes the whole of the world brighter. All the talk now is about the war ending, so you’re not the only one to be getting ahead of the situation; one of my privates has begun planning her upcoming wedding with food and clothes _off the ration_ and people are far more willing to say “when all this is done...” Before we didn’t speak about life after the war. One could scarcely bear to think of it. When the raids were so dreadful you had to think ahead, of course, but it couldn’t be any farther than a few days or one was continually breaking plans. And then any time there was a lull people wouldn’t let themselves believe it would last—rather like not expecting the good weather to last the week before a Bank Holiday, since it never does. But this time is different. We haven’t had a raid in over a week and, with the reports coming steadily from you lot, we begin to hope there might be a moment to look around us and catch our collective breath.

Have you given much thought to what you’ll do after this, when it finally ends? When I went to university I had all sorts of lofty visions that the war has managed to derail rather firmly. However, I expect there will be many of us in the same situation. (Though, oh dear, isn’t that what happened after the last war? And so many women had nothing to do at all and became pathetic creatures in Torquay boardinghouses.) Anyway I rather think the things I want now are different to the things I used to dream about.

Thank you for the photograph. I admit, I was a bit surprised to find you smiling—I don’t know why, but you’re such a serious person I’ve never imagined you like that. Perhaps you smile continually and I’m horribly mistaken! They look like nice boys; of course you’d like to keep this with you. You may trust me to take care of it until you come for it.

Because that will happen, Fitz! Today I believe it with all my heart.

Affectionately,

Jemma

* * *

4 April 1945

Fitz,

I don’t mean to make a habit of writing a second, secret letter, but I haven’t got a confidante apart from you and it would be so damaging to my authority to collar one of my subordinates and say “look at this man—I’ve been writing him for nearly a year and I had no idea he smiles like Errol Flynn and has eyes like Gary Cooper. How can he possibly be both so wonderful and so dreamy?” I’m almost insulted on your behalf that you think I’d laugh.

How I feel about you has nothing to do with how you look, as is evident. And yet, how nice that you’ve got so much S.A. I shall very much enjoy any future examination I’m allowed.

All my love,

Jemma

* * *

16 April 1945

Dear Jemma,

You’ll never believe what we did today: went on parade. With so many other, vital-to-the-war-effort things to be done, the brass decided that it was a good use of our time to make ourselves as smart as possible and march up and down and around the church in the town we’re nearest for the adoration of the townspeople. It was the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever done in the Army, and I’ve done my fair share of ridiculous things. I can’t imagine what they thought would happen. In France the response might have been good for morale but here a fellow counted himself lucky if he didn’t get spat on—no one likes to be made to watch the side that beat you march about in smug triumph, and that’s true even when they haven’t been killing your sons and brothers. The other boys have been profanely eloquent on the subject, but maybe that’s to be understood. Everyone’s a bit on edge at present after the heavy load we’ve been under and **{BLACKED OUT}**.

To answer the question in your last letter, no, we aren’t involved in that horrible business with the camps. That seems the wrong word to call them, doesn’t it—camps are places you go on holiday, not to starve to death if you aren’t killed outright. I’m grateful to be well away. We aren’t getting anything more than hearsay and what the BBC decides it can air to the general public and that’s quite bad enough. Didn’t I say a few weeks ago that some new horror was likely to spring up to blot out the memories of the Rhine? Even imagining this is doing that job nicely.

To answer your accusation, I am not avoiding the question. When I say all I want is peace and quiet that’s all that I know. Obviously I’d like to never build a pontoon bridge or dig up a mine again, and I wouldn’t mind having the sort of work that doesn’t require you to think about it every waking minute. When I was getting my degree I thought there would be no better life than to spend all my time testing and inventing and researching, but now that’s what I am doing I see that it’s actually not what I thought it would be. Even taking out the bombs and the strafing runs, seeing no one but your colleagues and thinking of nothing but work and eating is dull. Do you know what isn’t dull? Walking down a street and watching a dog trot by with its mind on its own business. Working on a job because it interests you and not only because it will be useful. Sitting in the sun and thinking of nothing at all. Having a pint with a friend and being reasonably sure that you’ll see him again next week.

All that to say, if there’s one good thing the war’s done it’s made me appreciate the pleasures of peacetime. Two things, I suppose—appreciate the pleasures of peacetime and be contented with whatever my life becomes, as long as it’s not this.

Three things, actually. But the third goes without saying.

F.

* * *

19 April 1945

Dear F.,

You got rather up in arms over my teasing; I hope you don’t think I meant it! Goodness knows I didn’t tell you what I plan to do in any great detail. In part, this is because I don’t know what I plan to do—I expect I’ll remain with the ATS for some time, at least, but eventually we’ll be demobbed. My mother wants me to come home. My father does too, I think, though he doesn’t say so; he’s always been very determined that I should be allowed as much freedom to choose my own life as though I was a man. (You would like him. And he would like you! You have the same way of making jokes.) I haven’t decided yet if I’ll please them and go back. London is a marvellous city—anyone who has seen her stand firm in the fire, as I have, can’t think anything different—but I miss the honest dependability of the North. Do you feel the same about Scotland? Would you want to settle there?

Wherever I am I hope very much to lead the kind of life you describe. Of course I do want to be useful—there’s going to be a great deal of work to do, when all this is done—but as you say, one also hopes for time to enjoy what we’ve all been fighting for.

I’m sure you were very smart on parade, even if the Germans (or whoever the aforementioned townspeople were) didn’t appreciate it. They likely weren’t meant to, you know. At least, they were likely meant to appreciate that you were very well-kitted and competent and that it would be in their best interest not to fight very hard or make things very difficult for you. There’s a great many sides to morale. At this point I would imagine the higher-ups are willing to try anything to bring the war to a quicker end, even if it makes you look silly. There are many worse things they could do. Have done, even. You don’t have dress uniforms like the Regulars, do you? That seems a waste of money and I can’t imagine how you’d keep them clean. When I enlisted I was only given coupons for a single two-piece uniform and I’ve had to make it last day-in and –out all this time. What I don’t know about getting bloodstains and grease from wool isn’t worth knowing.

Now that the bombs have stopped there’s discussion of sending some of us ambulance corps over there, to assist where there’s still need. We have no say in the matter, of course, but I’ve thought about it—imagine if you and I happened to run into each other somewhere in Germany? What an odd thing that would be. It might almost be worth it.

Affectionately,

Jemma

* * *

23 April 1945

Jemma,

No, it would not be worth it. I hope you never come over here and have to experience this like I do. No matter how much I want to see you I could never wish that for anyone; I wish myself out of it as soon as I honourably can go. Don’t be a fool.

Yes, I do miss Scotland, and I’ve always imagined myself living there—but you always imagine the only place you know, don’t you? In some ways I was never at home there. In some ways I’ve never been at home anywhere. I don’t think it’s the place so much as a feeling, and that could come from anything, couldn’t it? Some of the lads say that reading their wives’ letters is like being home again, even being so far away. I didn’t understand it for a long time—thought it was a figure of speech—but I think I do, now.

Sorry this is rushed—you wouldn’t believe the amount of work we have to do at present and with no supplies. I may use my spoon to dig up the dirt and my knife to smooth it out if they don’t manage to get our things to us soon.

Will write more if possible. If not know I’m speaking to you in my head all the time.

-F

* * *

30 April 1945

Dear Jemma,

At this critical moment two days probably seems an eon to you, I know, but I really haven’t had a moment to even read your letter, much less respond. We’ve just been through the worst fighting of the war—the worst fighting for us, anyway—so many chaps were killed and wounded, I’m lucky to have got out with just minor injuries from shrapnel. No, not like you’re thinking, I do truly mean minor. It’s cuts that will heal over, and they’ve already poured so much iodine over me that I’m stained as yellow as a daffodil. By the time you get this—since we’ve built enough good roads to cover this whole country, the Germans ought to thank us for our help—I won’t even notice them anymore. Please don’t worry about me.

We’ve just heard on the wireless that the Soviets have surrounded Berlin and are now running over the city. It seems rather hard that we’ve come all this way and Stalin will get the glory of Berlin, but it being done is the important thing now, and it surely can’t be very far off. If it takes three days for you to get this letter, perhaps it will have already happened by the time you read it! Save me the papers, if it does. In fact, if you could, save me any papers with important news and I’ll pay you back when I can. Here we only get news very behind the events, and no one would want to read it in German papers. I’d like to have a record of this. It might be one of the most important things we’ll ever experience—imagine showing the children someday, or grandchildren: “this is the paper from when Berlin fell. This is a paper from the day the war ended.” With any luck the war will be a far-off story for them and they’ll have lived in peace so long they can’t imagine what it was like now. But you and I will know.

Fitz

* * *

2 May 1945

Fitz,

Hitler dead! Can you believe it? All day I’ve gone round in a bit of a daze, so terribly happy (but then also a little guilty being glad anyone is dead—but then remembering how much suffering he had been the architect of, and feeling glad again). They just announced it today but perhaps it’s been several days—perhaps even when you wrote last he was already dead and the end of the war now firmly (surely!) in motion. I saved the paper, as you asked. You don’t think they’ll try to avenge him, do you? I know they’ve said the war will continue but with the Soviet forces surrounding the city they can hardly mount any sort of serious attack. They’ll have to surrender, and soon.

Even so, Fitz, please continue to be as safe as you can while getting the job done. There are too many terrible stories about men being killed after the cessation of hostilities. And be sure to keep your wounds covered, since I imagine they are still in existence despite your assurances that you “won’t feel them”; I have confidence in our medical personnel but blood poisoning is such a terrible way to die. Keep the bandages on and wash as often as possible and use iodine whenever they’ll allow it.

I’m trying not to be wobbly about the whole thing but we’ve got so close now and I’m so unused to being happy anymore, all the protective gates I’ve built up over the last four years are coming down as the fens are flooded. Bear with me, Fitz—I’m sorry, and I’ll dam the waters back again as soon as possible. I wouldn't want to have to tell ~~the~~ my children I spent the last week of the war weeping.

Affectionately,

Jemma

* * *

4 May 1945

Dear Jemma,

Don’t dam the waters back. Or do, if you like, but don’t think you need to do it for me. I like you whichever way you are.

I’m not sure what, exactly, you’re feeling wobbly about, since you were very careful not to say, but I’m feeling brave today so I’m going to take a chance and say it, though I never said it before: I like when you are wobbly over me. You’re so careful all the time, Jemma—it makes you able to bear so much, I know, and I admire that about you, but when you forget to be careful over me I know it means that your care _for me_ is even stronger than your discipline. I hope I’m not sounding like an ape-man. I don’t like this because it gives me power over you. I like this because I’m not used to being cared about so much. And because it’s you doing the caring, I like it even more.

Oh, damn, it’s coming out all wrong—I knew it would. I sat down to write today because something marvellous has happened and the floods that are knocking down your gates have broke mine into smithereens. The rumour is that Monty took the surrender of the German forces in this part of Europe today—everyone we’ve been fighting since last June, surrendered, just like that. It’s not all of Germany and it’s not all of our enemies, but it’s enough to prove that the war _will_ be won, and soon, and that everything I’ve hoped for—everything I’ve really hoped for, which isn’t just about a pint and a dog and sitting in the sun—might, actually, come true.

Jemma, when this is done, I’d like to claim my prize for guessing the detective story. You thought I had forgotten about that, didn’t you? I hadn’t. I just wasn’t bold enough to ask. But today I am. As my prize, I’d like to take you dancing. Borrow the company dress, finagle the night off duty, and come out with me—I promise I won’t disappear after that, unless you decide you can’t actually bear me and ask me to go. I’d like a chance to see what we can be outside of pen and paper. I think we could be something real.

I hope that doesn’t make you uncomfortable. If so, burn this letter and pretend it never happened, if you can. I know I may have spoilt everything, but I had to take that chance.

Yours, if you want,

Fitz

P.S. Oh, God, please don’t let me have spoilt it.

* * *

8 May 1945

My darling, darling Fitz,

Victory in Europe today—Mr Churchill was quite careful to note that we’ve still got Japan to deal with but you wouldn’t know it from the streets tonight. Everyone is out dancing and singing and making as much noise as they like—except me, because I am sitting quietly at home holding better news even than the end of the war, too happy to do anything but smile.

Yes, Fitz, I will go dancing with you. Hurry home.

Yours,

Jemma


	7. After Words

**1946**

_There’s no way to be certain which train it’ll be, but we’re coming back in through France so it’ll definitely be Charing Cross on the 16 th._

Jemma stood on the platform watching her fourth train of the day pull into the station—ten minutes late, but there had been worse delays during the war—and took a deep breath, just as she had the previous three times. There’s no way to be certain, she told herself again firmly, there were so many trains coming in from the coast and who was to say his would come in at a decent hour or, in fact, hadn’t been rescheduled in the three days since he wrote his letter—

Still, she adjusted her hat and tried desperately to keep from wringing her hands and crumpling the letters she held in tight grip. There wasn’t anything to be nervous about, anyway. He wanted her to come. He wouldn’t have told her what station, otherwise. She could tell from the deep slant and dark emphasis of his letters that he was just as impatient as she was, just as eager to finally demobilise and come home, just as anxious to become more than lines on a page. And yet her blood seemed determined to sprint through her veins and her hands and feet were terribly cold for reasons other than the draft of the platform, and she felt more on edge than she ever had during a bomb raid. Perhaps because that could only be the death of her, and this could be the life.

The carriage doors swung open. The other waiting women began to press towards the stream of men that came gushing out from the car and roaring onto the platform, most wading through in search of their soldier but several creating natural forks in the flood as they clutched and kissed a newly arrived love. Around these, the other soldiers whooped and whistled on their way past. Jemma watched one woman run heedlessly towards the front of the train to meet a man who was running towards her, elbowing anyone in his way; their faces shone like the sun in the midst of a summer shower. When they collided she had to glance away, too embarrassed to be witnessing such a passionate embrace. But she was glad for them, all the same.

“Er. Pardon me. Are you—?”

She spun, heart pounding. Was it—?

“Yes.”

His voice came out like a whisper; well, her own didn’t feel as though it would be very steady. She decided not to trust it, nodding her response. Yes, she was Jemma. Yes, he was Fitz.

The first thing she noticed was his hands, wrapped around the straps of his kit bag so tightly that his knuckles had turned white. The second, that his curly hair wasn’t blond at all, as she had guessed, but a sort of sandy colour that would likely darken as he got older; perhaps it was lighter now from the sun in the south of France, where he had been lately. Third, that his eyes were even more blue than she could have imagined. Fourth, that he was looking at her like he never wanted to stop. Fifth, that she didn’t want to stop looking at him, either.

“Your eyes are like whisky,” he said finally. “I didn’t know. There’s all sorts of brown, you know. Could’ve been chocolate. Or mahogany.”

Would he have preferred a different colour, she wondered. “You never told me your hair colour at all. I didn’t realise until just this morning.”

The corner of his mouth flickered up just long enough for her to notice. “Don’t know what colour to call it, that’s why. And it looks different with the pomade.” He shifted from foot to foot, his eyes dropping to her shoes and tracing up her body. Any other man she would have slapped, but Fitz’s perusal didn’t make her feel cheap. Just the opposite, in fact. When he returned to her face, he smiled again, gaze flicking up to the feather of her hat and then back to meet hers. “And now I know how tall you are.”

“Not very,” she said, “but then, you aren’t very tall either, are you.”

“I _did_ say that.” His smile turned rueful. “Also rather embarrassingly Scottish, as you can probably hear.”

“I don’t mind,” she managed to say, an understatement so vast she couldn’t even blame it on being English. Mind the way the sounds caught in his throat and rolled warmly over the words? Whisky. Mahogany. Embarrassingly. She could listen to him read the dic., if he liked.

But he seemed to have run out of words, content to just look at her. Perhaps they had said them all already, and now they had to catch up knowing each other with the rest of their senses? That could be equally wonderful: to know Fitz by touch and sound and smell and sight as well as she knew him by sentences. But no, she realised, there were still some very important words to be said. Not now, though. Not here.

“Do you have somewhere to be at the moment?” she asked, trying to remember if there was anything more intimate than a Lyon’s nearby. But he shook his head regretfully.

“We do—some last things to finish up, and getting the”—one long-fingered hand swept up and down his body—“suit, and all. Don’t know how long it will be except much longer than it should.”

“That’s the Army for you,” she agreed.

“But I could—I could come see you, perhaps. Or phone you, if you’re on the phone.”

“Yes, both those things.”

“Have you got—”

“Yes, here.”

With one final deep breath, she held out the envelope she had been clutching all morning, a little worse for the wear but not so wrinkled that he wouldn’t be able to read the information she had written there. He took it between his thumb and two fingers, gripping the top corner while she still held the bottom. “Special delivery,” she said, and didn’t recognise her own voice.

He sounded as breathless as she felt. “That’s the quickest post I’ve ever got.”

“Actually, this one’s taken a very long time to reach you.”

His eyebrows drew together, confused—she hadn’t known that was one of his expressions, and she loved it already. “Why?”

“You’ll see when you read it.”

“Should I read it now?”

“No. But as soon as you can.”

“I always do.”

He tucked the letter carefully away in his breast pocket, then took a deep breath of his own. “Well, I ought to go. But I’ll talk to you soon. Or see you. Or both.”

“Yes.”

They stood facing each other for another moment, still not speaking. Jemma felt her body sway forwards and thought his did the same, but didn’t know what to do next.

“I’m not sure how to end without signing my name,” he said, huffing a laugh. That unfroze her, and she laughed properly.

“I’ll say it for you, then. Goodbye, Fitz.”

“Goodbye, Jemma.”

He darted forwards, one hand gripping her wrist to swipe his thumb against the skin above her cuff. And then he was gone into the stream again, which was now flowing off the platform and into the station and thence to all of London, and then to the rest of their lives.

Jemma, meanwhile, stood on the platform a moment longer, one hand covering the cheek where she had just received her very first kiss from Fitz.

* * *

**1947**

Fitz tossed his hat on the hall table as he went past, thought the better of it after a few steps, and returned to place it carefully on the hook with his mac. The motion made Jemma’s coat sway a little on its peg beside his, sending a faint whiff of her perfume to fill the flat’s tiny entryway. Rosewater and lemon and the slightest chemical smell from her work at the dispensary—he took a deep breath and smiled, grateful to be home despite the fact that he had left barely an hour ago. His local had many charms, none of which held a candle to what was on offer here. Rubbing Jemma’s sleeve quickly between two fingers, he removed his shoes and switched them out for slippers before going through the door into the flat proper.

Jemma sat at the desk with her back to the door, her hair clipped back into a poof at her nape. He could just hear the _scritch, scritch_ of her pen between the music burbling from the wireless—something light, swinging, and undemanding. “Back already, Fitz?” she asked without turning around. “How’s Tommy?”

“He’s had better days.”

“Let’s hope tomorrow will be one of them.”

She stopped writing to cast him a small smile over her shoulder, then went back to her work. Glad of the chance to observe without bothering her, Fitz propped his hands at the small of his back and traced her form with his eyes: the rich sheen of her hair, the soft line of her neck, the thoughtful way she canted her head as she pondered a word. A cup of tea steamed faintly at her elbow; as he watched, she reached out absently and brought it up for a drink. Her wedding ring glinted cheerily in the warm lamplight.

“You’re staring again.”

Her voice, distracted though it was, filled his chest like wind in a parachute, and he drifted to a stop behind her chair. Bending down, he wrapped his arm around her shoulders from behind and kissed her cheek, lingering. “Had to remind myself it wasn’t in my head.”

She didn’t let him pull away, putting her pen down to take hold of his forearm and keep it tucked against her collarbone. “We’re both here.”

Breath in, breath out. Fitz rested his chin against her shoulder and closed his eyes, concentrating on the quiet rustle of their clothing and the creak of her bones and the scent of her skin. She made a small, contented noise and brought her left hand up to clasp his right where it rested against her shoulder. _Haven_ , he thought. _Home_.

The song ended and the wireless announcer—a woman, someone he didn’t know—read off the name. “What are you listening to?” he asked.

“I don’t know. It was the Home Service but I was tired of the news, so I switched to the Light Programme. Just to keep me company.”

“Heard anything good?”

“Not yet.”

But they both smiled as the next song began with several dramatic piano chords. “Oh, this old chestnut,” she said, her thumb stroking gently over the back of his hand. “I _am_ fond of it, but you’d think they’d have something new by now.”

“Maybe. But since they haven’t.”

He stepped back, still keeping hold of her hand to pull her to her feet. She laughed as she came and twirled under his arm obligingly. “Are you asking me to dance, Corporal Fitz?”

“Why yes, Staff Sergeant Simmons, I am. Again.”

Her eyes, already softer than light falling through a window, grew warmer than noon. “And I’ll say yes every time.”

They got into position just as Perry Como began singing: _“Til the end of time, long as stars are in the blue, long as there’s a spring, a bird to sing, I’ll go on loving you..._ ”

They spun in slow circles, Jemma’s humming making his chest rumble where it met hers. Jemma making him shiver wherever she touched him, just like the very first time they danced to this song, the very first day they met. He had been so nervous—so had she, she told him after, but he hadn’t noticed—they kept talking over each other until he apologised, saying “Sorry, I don’t know how to talk to you.” And she had said, “I think you do, just not aloud.”

“ _Til the end of time, long as roses bloom in May, my love for you will grow deeper, with every passing day..._ ”

Before they met he didn’t think he could love her more than he did from their letters. Whatever her voice sounded like, however she looked as she moved, the music of her laugh or the feel of her hand in his—surely all that was just incidental. He had been so wrong. And so right, too. He didn’t love her _more_ now, only in more ways.

“ _Til the wells run dry, and each mountain disappears, I’ll be there for you, to care for you, through laughter and through tears_...”

“Did I ever tell you,” he said, “that you’ve got beautiful penmanship.”

Jemma never laughed at him when he didn’t try to make her, but a ribbon of amusement threaded through her response. “You can thank Miss Folkestone for that; I had the most dreadful scribble as a child.”

“Even if you scribbled it would still be beautiful. It looks like you.”

“My penmanship was the first thing you knew looked like me.”

“True but irrelevant. I love to read your writing. I even like reading your shopping lists.”

“I’m glad someone gets pleasure from them,” she sighed. Fitz made a note to take his wife out to dinner sometime soon and spun her away as the music moved into the instrumental bridge.

She came back with Perry Como, glowing, and placed her hand on the back of his neck. “I shouldn’t tease. I’m fond of your penmanship, too. It’s not as neat as mine, of course—”

“Of course.”

“—but it rather gives me the thrilling feeling that something pleasant is it about to happen. Which is strange, isn’t it? One can’t say your letters were always very pleasant, and I scarcely see you write anymore.”

“No,” he said, startled, “surely that isn’t true. I write all the time.”

“At the office, perhaps. Not here.”

He considered, drawing her closer.

“ _So take my heart in sweet surrender, and tenderly say that I’m, the one you love and live for, til the end of time!”_

“Well. Perhaps not.”

The song came to an end and shifted to something he didn’t know, still soft and sweet but unfamiliar. Jemma trailed her hand down his shoulder, tingles in its wake, and stepped back out of hold. “Thank you for the dance, Corporal. Now, if you don’t mind, I ought to finish my job so I can get back to my husband.”

“I do mind, actually. I’ve got an urgent letter to write.”

“Fitz, what—?” She turned to watch as he strode past her and took her chair, pulling a fresh sheet of paper towards him and picking up her pen. “I didn’t mean you had to start writing things down just to please me.”

As though he wouldn’t do anything at all just to please her, he thought, hastily inking out the words that throbbed at his fingertips. A quick roll of the blotter and it was done, folded in half and held out in her direction. “Special delivery, ma’am,” he said, standing to salute.

Jemma’s face couldn’t decide whether to be exasperated or fond, but she took the note and unfolded it carefully. “Honestly, Fitz, you were the one who began this.”

“No,” he said, watching her read the note and feeling his chest go so tight he might have burst, “you started it, but we have the rest of our lives to finish it.”

The letter was still in her hand when she came forwards to kiss him, but he couldn’t feel the corner down his collar so much as her hands on his face, her waist under his palms, her lips over his. And when she pulled just far enough away to wrap her arms tightly around his neck, the crinkling of the paper in his ear was not too loud to drown out her voice in his other: “24 February 1947. Dear Fitz: I love you, too. Equally yours always, Jemma.”


End file.
